Magyar Agar

Sighthounds of this general type are believed to have travelled into the Carpathian Basin with the Magyar tribes in the ninth and tenth centuries, and dogs answering the description appear in Hungarian records and estate accounts for centuries afterwards. The breed's heartland is the great plain, particularly the counties around Hajdu-Bihar, Somogy and the Transylvanian lands that formed part of the historic Kingdom of Hungary.

The working pattern was distinctive. Rather than the short explosive sprint favoured in English coursing, Hungarian hunters rode out with their agarak and expected the dogs to hold a chase over several kilometres of open ground, sometimes for an hour or more of intermittent pursuit. That demand shaped a dog with more substance and endurance than the classic Greyhound silhouette.

In the nineteenth century some breeders crossed in English Greyhound blood in pursuit of more speed, which blurred the old type. Deliberate recovery work began in the twentieth century and intensified after the Second World War and again in the 1960s and 1970s, when Hungarian breeders went back to farm dogs on the plain to rebuild the sturdier native form. The Federation Cynologique Internationale places the breed in Group 10 among the sighthounds, and it is recorded in the American Kennel Club's Foundation Stock Service rather than holding full recognition.

Males generally stand around 26 to 28 inches at the withers and females around 24 to 26 inches, with weight usually falling between roughly 49 and 68 pounds. The overall impression is of a strong, workmanlike sighthound rather than a delicate one: the chest is deep, the loin muscular, the bone noticeably heavier than in a Greyhound of similar height, and the head broader across the skull with a well-defined stop.

The coat is short, dense and smooth, growing somewhat thicker over the winter, and the skin beneath is comparatively thick. That combination makes the breed far more weather-hardy than its short coat suggests. Rose ears fold back at rest and lift when the dog marks something moving in the distance.

A wide range of colours is accepted, including fawn, brindle, black, white and various pieds and combinations, while black and tan, blue and tricolour patterns are outside the standard. The tail is long, carried low with a slight upward curve and never gaily over the back.

Indoors the Magyar Agar is a calm and notably affectionate dog, attached to its own family and happy to spend long stretches asleep on something soft. It is not a fussy or clingy breed, but it wants company and does poorly kennelled alone at the bottom of a garden.

Compared with most sighthounds it carries a stronger guarding instinct. It will notice and announce a stranger at the gate and can be reserved with people it does not know, though it should never be sharp or aggressive. Given proper introductions it settles quickly and reads its owner's reaction to visitors.

The chase instinct is real and permanent. A Magyar Agar that sights a running hare, cat or squirrel will go, and it will be travelling far too fast to hear a recall. Most owners exercise the breed on a long line or inside securely fenced ground, and household cats need careful, gradual introduction from puppyhood rather than optimism.

With children the breed is generally patient and good-natured, particularly with youngsters old enough to respect a sleeping dog. It usually lives easily with other dogs, and with other sighthounds especially so.

The breed's original and continuing role is coursing and hunting over open country: hare above all, but also fox, and historically as a general-purpose hunting and guarding dog for farms on the plain. Live coursing is now restricted or banned across much of Europe, and the modern outlet is lure coursing, straight racing and oval track racing, where the breed's stamina shows to advantage over longer courses.

Beyond field sports, Magyar Agars do well at canicross and as running companions for owners who cover distance at a steady pace. Their trainability is respectable for a sighthound, so basic obedience and even rally are within reach, but they are motivated by their own interest rather than by a wish to repeat exercises, and heavy-handed drilling gets nowhere.